When
by abracadera
Summary: "Been paying attention to you before you even knew my name, Champion." Torian visits the Mandalorian Enclave on Dromund Kaas for the melee. Context universe. Contains spoilers for the SWTOR bounty hunter class story, Chapter 1. Rated T for violence, blood, language, Mando'a cuss words. F!Bounty Hunter/Torian Cadera.


_**When**_

Long, strong thighs wrapped in close-fitting green and black armor, the cut of it emphasizing the curve of her hips, the dip of her waist, making her gender unmistakable. The rest of her kit is a heavier plate and mismatched, red and gold, yellow and silver, all of it scorched and dinged, the paint scratched_, aliit _and_ aliik _scrubbed away, as if she collected it piece by choice piece off the corpses she left in her wake. She probably had.

She has a way of standing that makes her look ten feet tall and blaster-proof, hips cocked, arms folded. More interesting than the Trando that Cwor put his creds on, or the Mirialan, Ratle, whip thin and so wiry she reminds Torian of a tree bare of leaves.

He can't identify the latecomer, or the bucket she has on her head; it looks almost like a weapon itself, flaring out at the back of her neck, covering her eyes but leaving her throat and the lower half of her face bare. Her lips are full, dark with war paint and set in a line, more determined than grim. She looks as if she fought her way through an _akaata _or two just to get to the Melee; when he peers at her more closely, he isn't sure if the red on her kit is paint or blood. Maybe not her own blood.

"_Atin'la verd'dala." _Cwor sounds as if he's regretting his wager now. He is all but hanging over the railing, staring down at the_ beroya _who's come back from the dead.

Lodi dismisses this with a wave of a big armored hand._ "Vaar'yc dala." _

_"Nu Ratle, vod." _Cwor smacks him good-naturedly across the back of the head, having to hop to reach it_. "Nu gar cyar'ika."_

_"Vorpan Kyr'am." _Lodi corrects him, unperturbed.

_"Vorpan vaar'ika. Shiib sa haashun."_

Torian stops listening, focusing on the two women: the Mirialan affecting languid, confident boredom, talking down to the latecomer._ Atin'la verd'dala, _as Cwor called her, looks unimpressed, lips stretched into a smirk. She says something in reply to Ratle, her stance changing, feet spreading shoulder-width apart, her hands flexing in readiness at her hips, limbering up over her blasters. Her smirk sharpens into a hard, glittering smile.

He can't hear what Ratle's said to her, what she's said in return, but the sight of that smile, unsheathing like a bright, lethal blade, makes his blood pop in his veins, his heart hitching and then all but kicking him in the chest from the inside out. His breath catches. In the space between his two heartbeats, time stops.

Something with an enormous wingspan flutters low in his gut, the beat of unseen wings picking up to match the sudden hammering of his heart, wild in this chest, tight in this throat. He tries to swallow, fails. He can't breathe. It's as if she's stabbed him with her smile, the edge of it so keen he feels no pain, only his body's raw, visceral reaction as warm blood and life spills out of him.

He makes himself swallow around his heart, makes himself breathe, crossing his arms against his chest to hold in his reaction, hold it back. The hair on his arms is standing up on end, his blood is up, _all _of him is up, alive and awake and keenly aware of her. A blush scorches across his face, a thrown flame, the heat of it making his eyes water. He can't stop staring at her.

He is immediately grateful all eyes are focused on the hunters below them; he can control his breathing (somewhat), his reaction (barely), but not his face. It's more than just her blade of a smile, or the confident, capable, _gett'sela_ way she is standing, or the ripe, inviting curve of her hips; he doesn't know who she is, has never seen her before, but it's as though something deep in his chest, his heart, his blood, _recognizes_ her.

"_Tion'cuy?"_ Someone asks. It isn't him; his voice won't work.

Lodi shrugs a big shrug next to him, saying without words what they all know: that in a few bare minutes it won't matter who she is, unless she's the victor. There are no runners up in the melee.

He stares at her, pulse pounding as if his heart is trying to kick its way out of his chest and fling itself at her feet, knowing with an unshakeable certainty that he will need to see her face, know her name, know _her_, if she lives.

If.

_When_.

The Huntmaster raises his arms. Lek lets the hunters off their leashes. He tells them to fight.

Ratle and the Rodian hunter both target the latecomer immediately, rapid shots impacting harmlessly off the shield-barrier she hastily erects around herself with a thrum of bluish light. She turns and tags Ratle with an explosive dart, the device blinking ominously up near the Mirialan's heart, nearly simultaneously firing another projectile from her opposite wrist at the Rodian, her forearms crossing defensively in front of her torso. The tiny barb bites into the Rodian's kit and he begins to shake, helplessly rooted to the ground, electricity arcing through his body.

She closes on Ratle then, a burst of propulsion from her jetpack hurdling her across the arena like a skipped stone, a second, quicker burst packing an extra punch behind an uppercut that sends the Mirialan catapulting backwards, her body meeting a pillar with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. The dart winks red on impact and explodes with a tremendous bang, scorching the surface around Ratle's flung form in a black starburst.

The Mirialan falls heavily to the arena floor below the dais, her armor blackened and smoking. When she tries to gain her feet, clawing at the pillar to pull herself up, the latecomer nails her with a heavy double blaster shot that puts her back on her knees, then a wrist-mounted missile blast bursts her chest armor into flames, engulfing her. The Mirialan doesn't make a sound as she burns; when she falls again, she stays down.

Lodi shakes his helmeted head._ "Osik."_

Torian barely hears him. The cheers from the crowd at the latecomer's kill are deafening.

He watches her turn towards her remaining competition, hips swiveling, fists full of death. Only the Trando and the human are left; both the Gamorrean and the Rodian are sprawled, lifeless, on the dais. He doesn't know how they met their rapid ends, so focused he is on the latecomer. Her opponents are as equally focused on her now; her shield catches two quick shots from the human and a stun grenade from the big yellow lizard before abruptly blinking out in a flash of blue.

She jets up and away into the air, firing both of her blasters and a salvo of missiles from above, targeting both hunters with impressive firepower. The human has a difficult time getting a bead on her with the hellfire raining down on him, shots going wide as he scrambles for cover, but the Trando is a better shot, tagging her twice as he leaps out of the hot zone, one blaster bolt grazing her left shoulder, the other scorching across her right side, leaving a black burning trail against the armor covering her ribs.

When she lands she ducks the third shot intended to put a hole in her brain-pan, the very top of her helmet taking the impact with a loud ping. She rolls, tucking both blasters into her body, finds her feet again and in one motion comes up shooting, weapons blazing with yellow-black light.

The human dodges her volley of paired shots and immediately turns on the Trando, using the big lizard's distraction with the latecomer to riddle his scorched hide full of holes. The Trando staggers back under the combined onslaught, falls, weapon arm flinging wide.

Cwor bangs his helmeted head once against the railing_. "Jare'la or'dinii."_ Torian knows he means the human, not the Trando.

Then there are two.

She fires a concussion missile at the human the instant he zaps her with something that lashes out like an electric whip, ensnaring her and overloading the circuits on her gear. She freezes, her back arching, up on her toes, shaking in its grip, her kit steaming, just as the missile impacts, leaving the human holding his head as if his brains are leaking out his ears.

The crowd groans loudly, then hushes, waiting.

Both hunters are incapacitated for six long heartbeats. Torian counts them, holding his breath.

She breaks free first, teeth bared in determination, white-blue tendrils of electricity bursting off her shoulders like wings as she falls to her knees. The crowd immediately roars in approval. She gasps in a huge lungful of air, as if she's just surfaced from the sea; the crowd is too loud for him to hear the sound but he can feel it as if she is pressed up against him. Sweat drips out from beneath her helmet, slipping down her jaw. She rises to one knee, both blasters smoking, her kit radiating heat like a sun.

She takes another gulp of air and stands, holsters her red-hot blasters with hands that still twitch, and quickly vents her overheated equipment with a hiss of steam, her gaze never leaving her stunned prey. He watches her breathe out in a steady, calming stream, nearly mimicking the vent of her kit. She sets her jaw, focusing.

The human hunter begins to come around, shaking his head like a wet dog. She smiles that smile again: sharp, glittering, deadly_. Kyramla. _

Torian feels that blood-deep jolt again, like a retractable blade punching upward into his lung, keen and quick and painless, taking his breath away.

The human, to his credit, doesn't shit his pants when he's greeted by the sight of the latecomer careening towards him, a quick forward jolt from her jetpack closing the distance between them in a blink. He gets off two close volleys, one pair missing her completely, the other glancing off her chest plate with a high-pitched whine, before she slams her shoulder into his gut. He flops back, stunned.

Torian hears the wrist-blade before he sees it, the unmistakable snikt of the blade extending into the human's exposed throat, then the heavier, thicker sound as her wrist snaps back, withdrawing the blade, wet and red.

The human falls to his knees. She kicks the body away from her, dead before it hits the floor, a sleeve of dark blood covering her arm, painted across her jaw, flung out in a half-circle on the dais: red-black blood against pale skin, startlingly white teeth bared between dark lips.

She's breathtaking, in every sense of the word. She's victorious.

"The Melee is over. One hunter remains." Lek's gravelly voice makes it official.

The crowd roars for her.

Torian claps without cheering, even as Cwor and Lodi and the rest of the squad whoop and whistle around him. He's speechless.

She looks up at the cheering throng with a dazed tilt of her head, breathing hard, sweaty and bloodstained and possibly wounded, her weapon dripping blood on the dais. She flicks the blade clean with a quick, practiced motion, retracts it into her wrist sheath. She looks down at the body of the human hunter at her feet, then straightens, head held high.

He wants her to take off her helmet. She doesn't. She just smiles and holds up her arms in victory.

He almost smiles back at her, as if they are the only two people there, as if her victorious smile is just for him, only slowly becoming aware that Cwor is talking about the victor to someone who has joined them, someone he should know, a handler for the Great Hunt. He tears his gaze away from the _beroya_, focusing.

"Shucks, Cwor, I told you not to bet against my girl." The woman's drawl is pronounced, as is her backside. And her hair.

"Your dead girl?" Cwor scoffs.

"Pshaw. I'd say she's lookin' mighty lively right about now." She glances at Lodi, the edges of her mouth turning down. "Oh, sorry hon. Your little green girl..."

Lodi shakes his head, interrupting her. "She wasn't mine." He makes a vague gesture of reverence towards the arena where the dead still lay. "Good fight. Need a drink."

Cwor punches him in the shoulder. "I'm as broke as that Trando's sack,_ vod_. You're buying."

Lodi flicks a big hand at him as if waving away a fly. "_Shuk'la gett'se? Me'copaani? Uj'ayali?"_

They move away, falling in with the rest of Commander Fett's squad. Torian turns towards the hunter's handler. Now or never.

"Who is she?" His voice sounds rusty to his own ears. He realizes he hasn't spoken in hours, if not days.

The woman looks up at him, one red eyebrow arched, unconsciously mimicking her hairstyle. He is glad, not for the first time that day, that Jogo is out in the jungle hunting vine cats instead of hovering over him, ever eager to remind him of his place. He knows his place, better than most.

"Who wants to know?"

He can't read her expression, or what she means by the question, answering it the only way he knows how.

"I do."

She squints at him with the beginnings of a smile. "You're Cadera, ain't ya?"

He nods, feeling his spine straighten automatically at the admission. "Torian." He's never just Cadera. Cadera means Jicoln, Jicoln means traitor. His name has meant _arue'tal _for almost as long as he's borne it.

For an instant she mirrors his enunciation, his expression, his posture. "Crysta. Markon." Then she grins, her stance relaxing instantly, hand on her hip. "Pleased to meet ya, Torian."

"Likewise." He nods.

"Tell your friend Corridan Ordo he owes me fifty creds when you see him next." She cuts off him off at his look, holding up her hand. "He knows why."

He nods again. "Ma'am."

Crysta gestures to the arena. "I take it yer askin' me about my hunter. Her name's Morro."

He frowns at her, puzzled and expectant.

She chuckles at his expression. "I told her folks'd expect more of a name than that, 'specially you Mandos. Morro Trace." She shrugs. "She made that last bit up, but it works."

He thinks of the symbols erased from the hunter's kit, noticeable because there are no new ones to take their place. Anonymous; making a name for herself, literally. "No family?"

"Nope, 'less you count that girl fixin' to patch her up." Crysta points out the tiny figure below; he can see the wink of an implant on her brow, dark hair and an overjoyed smile. "That's Mako. They make a good team."

Mako seems to be doing more hugging than healing, a tiny, enthusiastic dance of joy that the _beroya_ winces her way through, gesturing at her scorched side pointedly with her blood soaked arm. The smaller woman bats at her hands and drags the hunter through the doorway, following Lek. Torian watches until they are both out of sight.

"All that's left of her team, now," Crysta says matter-of-factly. "Rest of 'em were killed back on Hutta."

Torian frowns deeper. "Hutts?"

Crysta shakes her head. "Don't look that way, hon. You know how these Hunts are – some folks'll do near about anything to get an edge over the competition. Somebody's got her number, that's for dang sure. You ask me, it's just made her sharper."

Torian nods. That, he can see. He knows the feeling.

She smiles at him. "Pleasure makin' your acquaintance, Torian. Now if you'll 'scuse me, I gotta get my hunter. Her fight's just startin', you know."

He knows.

He nods again. "_Vor'e._ Good hunting."

She grins. "I'll tell her you said so." She turns and departs.

_Morro. _He holds the name close to him, traces its shape over his heart. He'll tell her himself if he sees her again.

If.

_When_.

* * *

**Author's note: I don't speak Mando'a, so if the translations are off, my apologies. **

**Note from management: **_**N'eparavu takisit.**_

Mando'a translations from mandoa dot org:

_**aliit**_

clan name, identity

_**aliik**_

sigil, symbol on armor

_**akaata**_

battalion

**"**_**Atin'la verd'dala." **_

"Tough warrior woman."

_**beroya**_

_bounty hunter_

_**"Vaar'yc dala." **_

"Half-grown woman."

_**"Nu Ratle, vod. Nu gar cyar'ika."**_

"Not Ratle, brother. Not your sweetheart."

_**"Vorpan Kyr'am." **_

"Green Death."

_**"Vorpan vaar'ika. Shiib sa haashun."**_

"Green pipsqueak. Thin as see-bread."

_**gett'sela**_

ballsy

"_**Tion'cuy?"**_

"Who's that?"

"_**Osik."**_

"Shit."

"_**Jare'la or'dinii."**_

"Suicidal moron."

_**Kyramla**_

Fatal

"_**Shuk'la gett'se? Me'copaani? Uj'ayali?"**_

"Crushed nuts? What do you want? Uj cake?"

_**arue'tal**_

traitor's blood

_**Vor'e**_

Thanks

Culinary notes from mandoa dot org:

_**haashun: **_Parchment bread - a thin sheet of bread dried to preserve it, and reconstituted in liquid. Mando ration-pack staple. Made properly, it is so thin you can read through it, hence the name: "see-bread."

_**Uj'ayali**_: Uj cake - dense, very sweet flat cake made of ground nuts, syrup, pureed dried fruit and spice.

_**Shuk'la gett'se**_: Crushed or ground nuts. Topping or ingredient for uj cake.


End file.
